‘Frankenjet’ stealth fighter made from two wrecked warplanes joins US Air Force fleet
CNN
The US Air Force calls it the “Frankenjet,” a stealth fighter stitched together from the parts of two F-35s wrecked in accidents that is now on duty and combat ready.
The US Air Force calls it the “Frankenjet,” a stealth fighter stitched together from the parts of two F-35s wrecked in accidents that is now on duty and combat ready. “’Frankenjet’” is fully operational and ready to support the warfighter,” a report from the military’s F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) said on Wednesday. The recycled warplane traces its origins to 2014, when an F-35A about to take off on a training mission from Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base suffered “catastrophic engine failure,” according to an Air Force report on the incident. The aircraft, known as AF-27, also sustained major damage to its rear. Pieces of a fractured engine rotor arm “cut through the engine’s fan case, the engine bay, an internal fuel tank, and hydraulic and fuel lines before exiting through the aircraft’s upper fuselage,” an investigation concluded. The resulting fire burned the rear two thirds of the fighter jet, it said.
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